


One of the Most Confounding

by ncfan



Series: Femslash February [27]
Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: (Explanation in author's note), Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alterous attraction, Aromantic Asexual Rhina Butterfly, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Bechdel Test Pass, Compulsory Sexuality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Femslash February, Femslash February 2019, Late Night Conversations, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Other, POV Female Character, Queerplatonic Relationships, amatonormativity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-27 03:18:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17758772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: For Rhina, dinners with her mother were getting increasingly hard to deal with. One of them did enable her to come to some realizations, however.





	One of the Most Confounding

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wanted to write about what I interpreted as the queerplatonic relationship between Rhina the Riddled and Lady Gyoza, with alterous attraction on Rhina’s end and attraction of an ambiguous nature on Gyoza’s. Truth be told, I wanted to write about a queerplatonic relationship because I’m aroace and fics centering on queerplatonic relationships don’t cross my dashboard very often (I think most of my ship fics wind up portraying the attraction as alterous to one degree or another, to be honest). The reason I posted this to Femslash February is because, while their relationship isn’t romantic or sexual, it sure isn’t a purely friendly relationship, either.
> 
> [ **CN/TW** : Crescenta is a twee nightmare (or twee terror, or twee tyrant; I haven’t decided which one I like best yet, though ‘twee tyrant’ flows the best), and Rhina isn’t really in a position to properly appreciate just how _much_ of a nightmare she is, though she is, in certain respects, starting to wake up to it. Also: amatonormativity; compulsory sexuality; invisibility and devaluation of asexuality and aromanticism; a brief mention to the probable societal beliefs in Mewni that Eclipsa’s preferences for monsters constituted sexual perversion]

Gyoza had been a part of Rhina’s life for as long as she could remember. Literally, as long as she could remember. Sure, she’d been five when Gyoza had been sent to live with the royal family and people usually started forming concrete memories before they turned give, but nothing before Gyoza was clear in her mind. Rhina’s first concrete memory was of Gyoza stepping through the portal with a then much-smaller Turtle Hopkins in her arms. She just remembered a thin, dark-haired girl, taller than her with a narrow face and large amber eyes holding a baby turtle with a top hat in her arms, and that was it. You couldn’t have pried Rhina from Gyoza’s side with a crowbar—and hadn’t Rhina’s mother tried, when she felt her daughter should be paying more attention to the business of becoming a queen.

Oh, well. Rhina’s mother was Crescenta the Eager, after all. At the end of the day, she was hardly going to argue _against_ being allowed to hold on to as many of the reins of power, for as long as she could. Especially considering Princess Emily had to go back home to rule over the Waterfolk; she needed _something_ to distract her from that. And while her mother was distracting literally everyone, including herself, Rhina grew up content in the company of Lady Gyoza.

And it had worked out pretty well during Rhina’s childhood, too. Rhina attended to her lessons dutifully—she didn’t want to be called _ignorant_ , after all, and besides that, the lessons were pretty interesting—and the fact that she and Gyoza had the same tutor (her mother had been somewhat prescient in that regard, or perhaps she had already seen the signs and forced herself to face the facts) certainly didn’t hurt.

They played card games together. They went on adventures together. They pored over the Book of Fashion together, and they made up riddles together (Of the latter, Rhina was significantly more adept, and more enthusiastic to boot, but Gyoza made valiant efforts). Rhina thought Gyoza might remember why she’d tied that red ribbon around her wrist, though if she did, she’d never said. They were always together, except for the times when Gyoza had to go home to her family, and Rhina was never so miserable as she was during those times. (Mother usually made arrangements for them to visit Princess—no, Queen Emily when Gyoza was away. It only helped somewhat. They’d have visited Aunt Dirhhenia, too, but Dirhhenia and Crescenta weren’t speaking after the last time Crescenta turned her sister into an animal against her will.) But they were usually together, and Rhina was happy. Things worked out well.

For a while, anyways.

But Rhina wasn’t a little girl, anymore, and she wasn’t _Princess_ Rhina anymore, either. She was _Queen_ Rhina, Queen Rhina with a still very-present, very-politically active, very- _involved_ mother, and Queen Rhina had dinner with her mother every evening, on the dot.

And _boy_ , did Mother like to bring up topics that killed Rhina’s appetite stone dead. One in particular.

“Now, sweet-muffin.”

Here was where it started. Her mother invented a new pet name for Rhina every week, some more prosaic than others. Whenever she used it, Rhina knew to start listening to her very carefully, and to choose her words even more carefully. _Really_. The only pet name Mother ever used for Rhina that didn’t forebode an Uncomfortable Conversation was ‘sweetie.’

It was a little earlier, this time, than last. They were just tucking into their roast, the candles on the dining table quivering as if they, too, dreaded the onslaught to come. Mother’s wardrobe had not become any plainer with her abdication and the institution of a newer, less frilly fashion trend in the royal court, and the frothy lace on her dress shivered as she leaned forwards to stare more intently into Rhina’s face.

Well, there was no avoiding it. Mother wasn’t going to be dissuaded from this topic; Rhina knew her entirely too well to pretend otherwise. She bit back a sigh (that wasn’t going to help her; it was just going to make things drag on for longer), and replied, “Yes, Mother?”

“Now, sweet-muffin,” Mother repeated herself, “You really should think about settling down. I know you’re busy—“ she giggled suddenly “—goodness knows _I_ was busy my first few years as queen; it was such a trial, convincing everyone the one-hundred and ten ordinances I passed with the Future Leaders of Mewni club needed to be obeyed.”

A reluctant smirk passed Rhina’s lips. Beside her, Gyoza snorted; Rhina kicked her leg under the table. “But you let them out of the dungeon eventually.”

“Oh, of course!” Mother waved her fork at Rhina. “Though they were decidedly short on gratitude. Really, given the way some of them complained, you’d think I had ordered they be starved or tortured. They didn’t even have to sleep standing up; I’m not a _barbarian_. I just sent teachers down to the dungeon to educate them about the new ordinances they’d been ignoring. It went wonderfully!” she said, smiling hugely—Aunt Dirhhenia always said that smile reminded her of a shark about to strike its prey; Rhina was inclined to agree. “In just a few months, they were all so sorry they’d broken my new ordinances, and they never broke any of them again! It just goes to show you, Rhina; you get more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

“Yes, Mother.” Smile. Humor her. Let her go on for as long as she cares to; she really knows how to go off on a tangent, does Mother (Rhina came by it honestly), and maybe dinner will be over by the time she’s done and she won’t have any excuse to keep Rhina at the table.

“But _really_ , sweet-muffin.”

Or maybe she’d snap straight back to the topic she was determined to bring up at least twice a week. It was always possible she’d do that.

In between bites of her roast, Mother said, “You have to start thinking about the future of the Butterfly family. If you die without a daughter, the only ones left to inherit will be Dirhhenia’s girls—“ she wrinkled her tiny button nose “—and you don’t want one of _them_ ruling Mewni, do you? They’re both as morbid as their mother, and nearly as lazy; can you _imagine_ the sort of queen either one of them would make?”

Well, at least she was bringing out well-trodden arguments first; maybe it was a sign that Mother didn’t have any new material to trot out this time. Not that this made it any easier to deal with. Rhina _liked_ her cousins; Eunomia shared her love of riddles (and sent Rhina riddles on her birthday religiously), and Castalia was a good, loyal friend, even if she did have a weird preoccupation with poisonous flowers. That wasn’t the only thing that had Rhina squirming in her chair, though. Far from it.

She started fidgeting with the red ribbon on her wrist, though she knew that if her mother noticed, it would be like a shark scenting blood. “Mother, I’m only twenty-four.”

Mother waved her fork at her again, the way Rhina remembered her waving her wand about, when it had still been hers. “And when I was twenty-four, you were walking on your own, and you’d already said your first words.”

Rhina sometimes forgot that her mother was middle-aged. She didn’t look it at all. Not a single strand of gray in her strawberry-blonde hair, not a single smile line on her face, and her poofy, frilly dresses were decidedly not the sort of clothes you would expect a middle-aged woman to be wearing. Rhina knew there was at least one spell of her mother’s devising that could reverse the ravages of time; clearly, she made good use of it. It might not have been merely vanity; certainly, Rhina had watched, many emissaries make the mistake of assuming they were dealing with a child. They regretted that mistake, though usually not until after they realized they’d been conned into making far greater concessions than they originally planned on. You really had to be careful, to remember just who you were dealing with.

“Mother, I’m hardly an old woman.” Rhina pushed her food around with her fork, her stomach churning. It felt hot in the room, despite the frost that she had found gathered on her favorite garden this morning. “It’ll be years and years before I’m too old to have children. Don’t you think I should be focusing on other things right now?”

Mother’s face crumpled slightly, her already enormous blue eyes opening even wider. “But you’d be so _happy_ if you found someone to love.” _I wouldn’t be. Not the way you’re talking about it._ “And you’d _love_ having children, sweet-muffin; I loved taking care of you when you were a baby so much, I got rid of two of your nurses so I could spend more time with you.” She pressed her palms flat against each other, holding her hands out in front of her, careful to never put her elbows on the table. Her expression changed abruptly to a positively luminous smile, previous distress completely forgotten. “If your tastes run more towards women than men, that’s _fine_ , Rhina. I’m the last person in the world who would think there was anything wrong with that. I can tell you the spell Emily and I used to—“

 _“Mother!”_ Rhina flew up from her chair, her face flaming. “That is too much information!” she spluttered.

This only earned Rhina a scolding frown. “Oh, don’t be a child, Rhina. You said it yourself—you’re not a little girl anymore. There’s nothing wrong with sex—and don’t start your whining again,” she snapped, when Rhina recoiled, not much, but too much to keep from being noticed. “You really are far too old to still have such an attitude towards sex. It’s perfectly natural, and if you would just start looking for someone, you would find someone to love, I’m certain of it.” Mother’s gaze was searing as she went on, very deliberately, as if speaking to a young and not particularly bright child, “You are duty-bound to provide the Butterfly family with an heir, and adoption absolutely will not do. As queen, you are hardly suffering from a lack of suitors, so _really_. What, exactly. Have you. been doing, Rhina?”

Rhina’s mouth worked, but nothing came out. Mother was looking at her as she would look at a child who was being especially bratty or especially dense, that scolding but still markedly patient look of someone who was waiting for Rhina to come to her senses, and oh, how Rhina hated that look. The more Mother looked at her like that, the smaller the room seemed to become, until the walls were pressing on her back and her chest and somehow she could still see her mother looking at her, waiting for her to come to her senses and admit that oh, you were right all along, Mother, I’m sorry I was so foolish.

Sometimes, Rhina really hated having dinner with her mother. Because sometimes, when she had dinner with her mother, she walked away from the table feeling as if her skin was too small for her body and her bones weren’t shaped right to act as the foundations of her body.

 _Please, why won’t you_ —

“Oh, Queen Crescenta!”

Rhina didn’t, at first, realize that Gyoza had spoken. Actually, she’d completely forgotten Gyoza was even at the table with them. They’d agreed between themselves that it would be better for Gyoza to just draw as little attention to herself as possible when Rhina’s mother went on this particular kind of tear. Rhina was always worried about how Mother would perceive Gyoza’s role in her life, in light of everything else. She just… She just didn’t want to expose Gyoza to that. She just couldn’t.

Mother’s eyes fell on Gyoza’s face almost abstractedly, and as Rhina took her seat, she hoped, uneasily, that whatever Gyoza was hatching wouldn’t blow up in her face. She fiddled with the ribbon on her wrist, and watched Gyoza closely.

“Queen Crescenta, have you ever been to the dimension of cats with human faces?” Lady Gyoza asked brightly.

Setting her fork down on the table (Rhina couldn’t remember when she had picked it up), Mother replied, “Ah, no, I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure, dear.”

Gyoza smiled widely, her amber eyes crinkling upwards. “Oh, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s amazing. I know everyone just thinks of the cats with human faces when they think of that dimension, but there’s so much more to it than that. The last time I was there visiting, I met this _gorgeous_ man—“ at that, Mother immediately perked up, suddenly drinking in the story eagerly “—and let me tell you…”

Dinners with Mother were often uncomfortable. It was a fact of life, like death and taxes. But as Mother and Gyoza spent the next twenty minutes swapping stories as the remains of their meal cooled and dessert was called for, eaten, and _that_ grew cold as well, Rhina discovered a new brand of discomfort that could be found at the dinner table. She listened to Mother and Gyoza swap stories of Mother’s courtship with Emily and what Mother had almost immediately branded Gyoza’s ‘love adventures,’ and wasn’t sure what would happen first: her throwing up, or her breaking down crying.

What she needed, really needed, was to invent a spell that would let the earth swallow her up, and never show her the light of day again.

-0-0-0-

It was a good thing, a very good thing, that Rhina had taken so quickly to the simple sleep mask. With her being such a morning lark and Gyoza being such a night owl by comparison (possibly partially literally; Rhina had yet to figure out if Gyoza had been teasing when she talked about having an ancestor who was a sapient owl), their sleep schedules inevitably clashed. Rhina knew Gyoza would be discontented if she had to turn the lights off when Rhina wanted to go to sleep; hence, the mask. Now, all Rhina had to do was make sure she remembered to take the mask off if she had to get up at night, lest she trip over Turtle Hopkins (Again).

She knew Gyoza was still awake. She could see a thin corona of golden light at the very edges of her vision. Rhina fisted her hand in the bedsheet, swallowed back a flittering wave of nausea. Without taking off her sleep mask, without rolling over in bed, she asked, faintly, “Gyoza?”

There was the sound of a page being turned, and a puzzled, “You’re still awake?”

“I—Yes.”

Another few moments, another few quick breaths that didn’t draw in nearly as much air as they ought to have. Another flash of feeling as if her body didn’t fight right, as if her skin was about to split open like the seams on a too-tight dress. “Gyoza… All those… _things_ you talked about with Mother at dinner…. Were they true?” She wasn’t sure what she’d do if they were. Maybe die. “I… I know that staying at my side isn’t always very _exciting_ , but you’re not going to take off with a boyfriend, are you? _Everyone’s_ taking off lately; once they find a lover, nothing else seems to _matter_ to them anymore, and I can’t—“

“Rhina!”

The firm note in Gyoza’s voice was enough to silence Rhina. She offered no resistance when Gyoza slipped her mask from her yes, squinting against the light as Gyoza took hold of her face, fingertips under her chin, and stared down into her face. Gyoza looked a little weird when viewed upside down without glasses on; the angles of her face were all wrong, and her hair obscured everything.

“Rhina,” Gyoza said again, just as firmly, “Rhina, breathe.” When she was apparently convinced that Rhina had calmed a little, she went on, “Rhina, none of what I told your mother tonight actually happened. You know that, don’t you?”

“What?” Rhina scrambled up into a sitting position. Gyoza’s book, which had been sitting precariously on her lap, now tried to slide off of the bed; Gyoza had to lunge to catch it. As she was doing that, Rhina cast about incredulously, “Then why did you tell her all of those things?! You talked about it all like it was all true!”

Gyoza raised an eyebrow. “Rhina, I told your mother all of those things about my ‘love adventures’—“ she rolled her eyes “—so she would leave you alone about your own love life.” Her voice gentled a little. “You were taking it a bit worse than usual; I was afraid the two of you would _really_ get into a fight this time if I didn’t intervene.”

“Oh.” All the energy left Rhina at once, leaving her to lower herself back onto the bed, blinking rapidly as she did so. “I… Umm…”

Gyoza smoothed some of Rhina’s bushy hair out of her face, smiling down at her fondly. “I’m not going to run off with someone else. I promise.”

Rhina smiled back at her, shut her eyes as Gyoza ran her fingers through her hair. “Alright.” But as Gyoza turned her attention back to her book, Rhina’s smile faded, and her mind was flooded with cacophony again.

There was only one kind of love worth enjoying. Two, if you counted the love between a parent and their child, though Rhina didn’t hear that spoken of often. That was her mother’s opinion—there was only one kind of love worth enjoying. It would have been bad enough if it had _just_ been her mother’s opinion, for her mother made certain her opinions were known, in no uncertain terms, on a regular basis. But everywhere Rhina went, there was the same message, inescapable; there was only one kind of love worth enjoying, only one kind of love that mattered at all.

And it was always, _always_ intertwined with sex.

Which Rhina was so childish as to find the very idea of repulsive.

It was both, actually: sex and romance. Her mother was obsessed with the idea of “true love” (this, despite the fact that she and Emily had had a massive fight when the latter went home to rule over the Waterfolk, and their visits almost invariably ended in another massive fight regarding Emily’s refusal to move back to the Butterfly castle), casual liaisons that resulted in children and not in marriage were hardly unknown to the queens of Mewni. The queen’s husband, if she had one, had best _not_ be caught dallying, but the queen, unless she was married to someone who had the sort of clout required to make things difficult, could in theory mother children with anyone she pleased (Though it’s best to stay away from the husbands—or wives, if you’re like Crescenta the Eager and have created a certain spell—of powerful noblewomen).

Rhina’s grandmother had had two daughters by two different fathers, and had married neither of them. It was at best unclear who Queen Eclipsa’s father had been—on top of the fact that no one (Rhina included) wanted to touch Eclipsa’s history even with a ten-foot pole, Queen Solaria had only been interested in men as far as they could serve as a potential sire for her heir, and had no use for them otherwise. There were whispers as to whether Festivia was really King Shastacan’s daughter; given the proclivities of her mother, it wasn’t out of the question that Eclipsa might have spat on an important alliance before she spat on the social order in its entirety. And Mother and Emily had never married. That had been, Mother insisted over and over, in the interests of maintaining the balance of power on Mewni—an alliance of that sort between the Butterfly kingdom and the Waterfolk would have thrown everything off-balance—but still.

Regardless of what Mother might think, Rhina would have been well within her rights to just find a man and… invite him into her bedchamber for the night. Wait to see if she fell pregnant, and, if necessary, repeat the process until it yielded the results she wanted. No marriage required. No romance required, and no regular copulation required.

The idea was about as appealing to Rhina as stripping naked to go running through the Forest of Certain Death at peak mosquito season, and it became no more appealing when Rhina substituted a woman in the man’s place.

Love poetry and erotic poetry and the copious amounts of poetry where love and eroticism overlapped were utterly bizarre to Rhina. She listened to others gush over it, and it was like she was reading something written in a foreign language. By someone with bad handwriting and only the loosest grasp of grammar and syntax.

Sex held no appeal, and romance even less. She’d been courted before, and felt absolutely nothing when confronted with gestures of courtly love, up until she and Gyoza got somewhere they could laugh over bad singing voices and worse lyrics in private. Rhina had _tried_ to generate attraction within herself, tried to generate lust and romantic desire, and neither had ever been forthcoming. Gyoza had never believed her when, as a child, she pretended to have a crush, not even for a moment.

Gyoza…

Rhina stared up at Gyoza, sitting beside her with her nose deep in a book, and frowned deeply.

“Gyoza? What are we?”

Gyoza flipped her book shut and shot a quizzical look Rhina’s way. “Don’t you usually save existential questions for the morning?”

“I _mean_ it, Gyoza.” Rhina ran a hand through her hair, fixing her eyes on the bedsheets. She was already feeling foolish; she couldn’t bring herself to look into Gyoza’s eyes and see her foolishness reflected back at her. “I mean, we’re friends. Obviously, we’re friends. But that’s not all there is to it, either.”

The pause before Gyoza said “…No” was like razor wire cutting into Rhina’s skin.

And yes, the pause was at best highly uncomfortable, but Rhina’s whole day had been uncomfortable, and she was starting to grow numb to it. “We’ve been sleeping in the same bed almost every night you’re here. We’ve been doing that for years. That’s not something grown women do under normal circumstances when they’re friends. That’s not something friends do. But we’re not lovers, either—I mean, I don’t think we are.” She drummed her fingers against the mattress, staccato and fast. “Mother would have noticed, even if I hadn’t. I mean, it’s _Mother_. There’s no way she doesn’t know we’re sleeping in the same bed.”

A sigh came from somewhere above her. “There’s a lovely image.”

“And she hasn’t said a word about it to me. If she thought we were lovers, she’d never leave me alone!” Rhina slapped her hand against the mattress. “It would just be ‘When are you going to get married?’ over and over again, until my ears started to bleed or her tongue fell out from overuse.”

Gyoza’s voice was slightly strangled as she agreed, “It probably would, at that.”

“So, we’re not lovers.” Rhina nodded decisively, though she didn’t have much range of motion lying on her side on the bed. “We’ve never—“ her face grew hot “—done any of the things lovers are supposed to do together. And besides that, Mother would have figured it out.”

There was silence, and Rhina buried her face into the sheets and moaned. Regardless of how little she wanted to, all she could think about were the happy (and sometimes not-so-happy, but still passionate) couples of the royal court, and how few people made it to middle age without marriage or a child under their belts. “Gyoza?” Her voice was barely audible. “There’s something wrong with me.”

“What? No, Rhina!” Gyoza’s deft hand fell into Rhina’s hair again, fingers presenting a light, gentle pressure on Rhina’s scalp.

The feeling of skin on her skin was suddenly overwhelming to Rhina. There came a tremor in her bones; her eyes prickled, though they did not wet the mattress cover. “There are things everyone else wants, and I don’t. There are things they feel that I don’t. I don’t…”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Rhina.” Gyoza’s hand moved, sliding down the back of Rhina’s head, pausing on the back of her neck, and settling on her back between her shoulders. There was only a thin layer of cloth between Gyoza’s hand and Rhina’s skin; the warmth was both comforting and too close. “There’s nothing wrong with you. I promise.”

Rhina sucked in a deep breath. Tried to will herself to look up into Gyoza’s face, and couldn’t. “I love you.” Saying it was like flaying herself open. “I’m not _in_ love with you. It’s not the sort of love between friends or family, but I’m not _in_ love with you. I don’t… I don’t think I _can_ be in love.”

It was love. It had to be. Rhina was never as happy as she was when she was with Gyoza, and she was miserable when Gyoza had to go home to her own lands. Gyoza was always interesting to be around, and she was just…

What even was love, anyways?

Rhina groaned in frustration, and that frustration galvanized her enough to, at last, look up at Gyoza. Gyoza’s sallow skin was tinted pink, and she was gnawing on her lip. A perfect counterpoint to Rhina’s own feelings, she thought in vexation. She didn’t want to think about what Gyoza thought about this current train of conversation. “It doesn’t make sense, does it?” she burst out. “It doesn’t make any sense at all!”

She was being stupid. Stupid and childish; that was all there was to it. She expected Gyoza to tell her as much, though she surely would have found a gentler way to break it to her than her mother would have.

But what Gyoza replied with was not an agreement. “It makes sense to me.” Rhina gaped up at her in agitated bafflement, and she went on, “Rhina, love may not be life’s greatest riddle, but it is one of the most confounding.”

“Oh?” Rhina wished she had her glasses on; it would have given her a clearer image of Gyoza’s face. “Enlighten me, then.”

A soft laugh followed. “You can ask a hundred people the same question, get a hundred different answers, and all of them would be correct, because it all depends on your point of view.”

Unsure as to whether it was more demand or plea: “And what question is that?”

Gyoza smiled and pressed a kiss to Rhina’s brow. “’What is love?’” she answered, her lips brushing against Rhina’s skin. “I love you, too, by the way. Now, try and get to sleep; you’ll be beyond cranky if you stay awake much longer and try to get up and your normal time.”

Rhina had nothing to say to that. She seemed to have been temporarily relieved of her tongue.

She looked at Gyoza until she fell asleep.


End file.
